Fall Education Seminars offer topics related to risk management and safety. Topics cover the range from summer operations to winter operations - all meant to give you tools and ideas you can bring back to your area.

Collision Course: A Renewed Focus to Protect Guests and Resorts

Collisions are the most common cause of serious injuries and fatalities in the ski industry. This doesn’t just impact the reputation of our sport’s safety (it seriously does); it can also impact your bottom line. Congestion and volume issues, trail design, off-duty employees, on-mountain vehicles, drug testing, guest etiquette—all can arguably be used to backdoor a resort into otherwise bogus claims. In this session, we’ll explore creative ways resorts are improving their operations to minimize collisions and resulting claims, including challenges with on-mountain vehicles, one of the most expensive claims facing some resorts. We will also unveil a compelling new industry-wide safety initiative designed to raise the awareness of reckless skiing, and the role that ski patrol, and all mountain professionals, can play in preventing collisions.

Industry Legal Update: Regional and National Issues

While all four sessions of the NSAA fall risk seminars will highlight specific legal issues, this session is dedicated to recent claims and litigation against ski areas—both regionally and nationally—and how these claims relate to your daily operations. In addition to traditional skiing claims, we will also explore recent issues involving summer activities, a growing trend in claims for the industry, including both good and bad examples of how to structure your non-winter activities and attractions. In addition we will address liquor liability, changes in release laws, the growing value of surveillance, the importance of improved investigations (especially in the terrain park), airbags, ADA updates, and state-specific issues.

The Case for Safe Mountain Work Environments: The Escalating Human and Financial Toll

This past season the ski industry experienced an unprecedented number of employee fatalities and catastrophic injuries—leaving us squarely in the crosshairs of OSHA. Emphasizing workplace safety is one of best opportunities for a significant ROI for your resort, and we’ll examine the costly human and financial impacts to our ski areas. As we review some of these incidents, we will also examine important changes to OSHA regulations that need to be on your radar, from helmet mandates, filing requirements, hazard analyses, and manufacturer recommendations. A culture of workplace safety directly translates to overall guest safety, improving all department bottom lines.

Message Control: How Mainstream and Social Media Can Impact Your Operations

Ski areas are too often the unfair target of negative media, but our resorts and the industry have tools available to protect ourselves, both from claims and impacts to our reputations. But as social media continues to explode, ski areas are more exposed—from lift incidents, catastrophic and fatal accidents, even hang ups with backpacks. This session will examine tools for crisis communications, how resorts counteract this negativity with positive messaging, and novel ways ski areas are using social media to their advantage with potential claims. We’ll also explore the pros and cons of GoFundMe drives, and how sincere efforts to work with families of those seriously injured can reduce claims and improve your resort’s community reputation.